The next day at school, Juan Carlos is armed with an overstuffed Señor Listopatodo. I resist the urge to ask him if it’s stocked with diapers.
I grip my new backpack, Señorita Por Si Las Moscas. Abuelita always tells me to pack more pairs of underwear than I need when we travel, por si las moscas. She makes extra pastelitos, por si las moscas. She carries a small umbrella in her purse even when it’s sunny, por si las moscas.
Just in case.
Last night, I wrote about Fautina in my diary, managing to remember everything Abuelita said, even though Keisha’s notes burned up in the firepit. But now, after a day at school where quivering slugs covered my seat in all my classes, every paper I wrote turned into fluttering white moths right before I’d hand it in to my teacher, and the cafeteria chicken nuggets morphed into shiny black beetles, I walk around town with Keisha and Juan Carlos, unsure of what else to do. Fautina hasn’t appeared yet.
I notice dark spots under Keisha’s eyes and her nails completely bitten off. She barely talks, and she looks away whenever I make eye contact. We’ve been friends since kindergarten and have always had something to say to each other. I think I hate the Luck Eater the most for this.
“You’re certain she hasn’t shown up?” Juan Carlos asks.
I roll my eyes. “I think it would be pretty obvious if another ghost relative appeared. And I’m starting to run out of ideas for my Luck Eater Insult Dictionary.”
“What letter are you on?” Juan Carlos asks.
“M.”
He chews on the side of his mouth and thinks. “Hey, Luck Eater, you’re a moldy microwaved mammoth.”
“No, he’s a microscopic muddy meatball,” Keisha whispers. Juan Carlos and I look at her, but she stares at her shoes.
“So now what?” Juan Carlos asks.
I scratch the mark on my arm as it tingles. “Okay, I’ve been thinking about something. When I write about my family in the diary, the words change. And they usually change to show how the person is gonna appear.”
“What are you talking about?” Keisha says, a bite in her voice that makes the mark on my arm hurt even more.
“What I wrote about Pipo looks like sheet music now, and that fits, because he can play music anytime. And, uh . . . Pipo wasn’t the first family member I got to appear. I wrote about my abuelita’s cousin Andaluz in the diary too. She drowned trying to cross the Florida Straits between Cuba and the US.”
The hard line of Keisha’s mouth softens.
“When I wrote about her, the letters swirled like they were being soaked. And Andaluz ended up creeping out of a stall in the school bathroom after I heard water dripping everywhere.”
Juan Carlos gasps. “So what about Fautina? Did anything happen to what you wrote?”
I pull the diary from my backpack and show them Fautina’s page. The words have turned into a rainbow of colors. A drawing of a large dish filled with arroz con pollo sits at the bottom of the page. Directly underneath what I wrote, a picture of a small child wrapped in a blue blanket pops up.
Juan Carlos eyes the page closely and bites his lip. “So these pictures appeared when you wrote about her?”
I nod and push my glasses up the bridge of my nose. When I do, I hear a snap, and the lenses fall from my face and onto the sidewalk, followed by my green frames. When I pick them up, the earpieces detach from the front, and my glasses crumble into five pieces.
I groan and mumble, “Por Si Las Moscas to the rescue, I guess.”
Tossing the destroyed glasses into my backpack, I pull out a lens case with an old pair of glasses. The prescription isn’t quite right anymore, but it’s better than nothing.
“Done?” Keisha says, crossing her arms and tapping her foot on the sidewalk.
I roll my eyes at her. Can’t she see I’m trying to make things better? “Well, excuse me for being cursed by—”
“Okay, anyway,” Juan Carlos interrupts. “I think I have an idea about Fautina. Maybe we need to give a storyteller an audience.” He twists his lips, thinking. “We should go to the wildlife center. They have a story time there. And, well, despite being a scientist, Dr. Younts is actually into . . . dead stuff.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Juan Carlos shrugs. “She’s always talking about the jellyfish auras, and she did a tarot card reading for a sea turtle. She might know more about getting dead people to appear. Maybe she’ll know how to help Fautina appear faster.”
Keisha shakes her head. “My moms told me not to mess with stuff like that.”
“Yeah, my abuela calls that cosas del diablo,” I add.
Juan Carlos sighs. “So we’re not supposed to do ‘devil stuff,’ but you’ve already summoned two of your ghost relatives and we’ve gotten the caca scared out of us by some horrifying Luck Eater?”
He turns down the sidewalk and hurries toward the wildlife center, calling over his shoulder, “Way too late, Super Ojos!”
The Port Ballí Wildlife Center sits tucked between rows of royal palm trees, the limestone building weathered by the salty gulf air. Juan Carlos guides us through the large glass doors, past huge tanks filled with blue and yellow striped pinfish, silvery pink Atlantic croaker, and fat brown catfish.
When I pass a tank of spotted sea trout, one fish raises its head to the surface and spits a long stream of water right in my face.
“What the frijoles? Come on!” I yell, wiping my old glasses on the edge of my shirt, hoping these lenses stay put. I yank a red rain jacket out of Por Si Las Moscas and put it on.
We venture to the back of the wildlife center, entering a room filled with bubbling tanks. Our shoes squeak as we walk across the rubber mats on the wet concrete floor. Juan Carlos ushers us to the back of the room where there’s a long table under warming lights. A blond woman stands counting sea turtle eggs, her blue eyes darting over trays as she scribbles on a clipboard.
“Dr. Younts? Could we talk to you for a minute?” Juan Carlos asks.
The woman sets her clipboard down on the table and eyes me and Keisha. “I didn’t see you on the schedule today, Juan Carlos. Which is good, I think. Fewer people to bore with your endless animal facts, I suppose.”
I purse my lips at Dr. Younts and cross my arms. Keisha mutters under her breath, “Excuse you.”
Keisha and I may not be getting along that well right now, but no one messes with the Super Ojos.
“Uh, yeah, right,” Juan Carlos answers. “Sorry about that. Stuff just comes out of my mouth sometimes.”
“You don’t need to apologize for being excited about something, Juanito,” I whisper to him.
The light above us pops and cracks, its electric hum filling the room. The slithering eels in a tank along the far wall slap their tails on the glass, the sound echoing off the wet floor.
“What do you need?” Dr. Younts asks. She walks over to a cage of mud crabs and tosses in a handful of oysters. The mud crabs attack the oyster shells with their black pincers, ripping them apart and feasting on the flesh inside. Dr. Younts’s thin lips curl at the sight.
“Make it quick, Juanito,” I whisper. “I’m getting a bad feeling about being here.”
Keisha nods, pressing herself against my shoulder.
“Right,” Juan Carlos says, clearing his throat. “So, Dr. Younts, this may seem a little weird—”
“That would be expected from you,” Dr. Younts interrupts. She picks up her clipboard again and runs a dark green painted nail along the edge.
“Oh, no. She didn’t . . .” Keisha says, digging her fingers into my arm.
“Yeah, uh, okay.” Juan Carlos fidgets and shoves his hands into his pockets. The baby alligator in the tank next to him snaps its jaws and hisses, making us jump. “I was wondering, since you seem to know a lot about this kind of stuff, if you could tell us how to . . . uh . . . summon dead people?”
Dr. Younts arches an eyebrow to a sharp point and purses her lips. She stares at Juan Carlos. “Really? Why? You must be getting desperate.”
The laughing gulls on perches in the corner begin to squawk and beat their wings. Keisha and I edge closer together. The lights above us buzz louder, like a swarm of bees swirling the room.
“Well”—Juan Carlos rubs the back of his neck—“I just like learning new things, you know?”
Dr. Younts snarls and points a finger at him. Her green nails seem to have grown longer since we started talking. “Your silly skateboard tricks is learning something new. Your nose in a marine biology textbook is learning something new. This is on another level, even for you.”
Juan Carlos takes a deep breath and steps forward. The mud crabs in the glass tank turn from the remnants of their oyster massacre and raise their pincers in the air, as if waiting for something else to shred to bits.
“But you really want to tell me, don’t you?” A smile breaks out on Dr. Younts’s lips. Instead of softening her face, it makes her teeth cast long shadows on her chin under the warming lights. “Oh, Super Ojos, Mari really has plunged you into quite the terrible situation, hasn’t she?”
My stomach rolls as my spine starts to quiver. How does Dr. Younts know my name or that we call ourselves the Super Ojos? I’ve never met her before.
Dr. Younts plays with the crystal hanging around her neck, and it turns black under her fingers. The laughing gulls beat their wings again, their piercing calls ringing in my ears. The alligator huffs, its hot breath fogging the glass.
“And all because of her family’s foolish traditions. You’re right, Mari. That’s the root of all your problems. Wouldn’t it be easier to just ignore where you’re from? It’s just an island full of pain and sadness anyway.” She reaches a hand toward Juan Carlos, and he takes a small step back. I jump as the mud crabs hit the glass of their tank, small cracks forming under their pincers.
“What are you talking about? How do you know all that?” I ask.
“Oh, I know you very well, Mari. One doesn’t forget family.”
Dr. Younts blinks, and her eyes glow green. She flashes a smile again, her teeth growing into jagged fangs. Her skin glistens and turns from a pale peach to an ashy gray.
Keisha gasps, and I yelp.
“You’re . . . you’re not Dr. Younts,” Juan Carlos stammers.
The woman in front of us smiles again, cracked lips dotted with dark blood. She snaps her fingers, and the tank next to her explodes, mud crabs scurrying across the floor toward us. They grow larger with each frantic step they take.
Juan Carlos turns and pushes me and Keisha toward the door. He rips open Señor Listopatodo and takes out a small container.
“Hurry, Juan Carlos,” I say, running down the hallway, away from the deep, cackling voice of Not Dr. Younts as the crabs nip at our heels.
Juan Carlos dumps out a container of brine shrimp, and the enlarged mud crabs stop in their tracks, gnashing and ripping the food apart.
Keisha pulls me and Juan Carlos through a door at the end of the hallway and slams it shut behind us.
We hunch over, our shoulders heaving as we catch our breath.
“Oh, hi there, Juan Carlos,” a woman says, rounding the corner in the hallway.
Keisha grabs my arm and squeezes it. I look up and gasp.
“Hi . . . hi, Dr. Younts . . .” Juan Carlos stammers at the person standing in front of us who looks exactly like the woman we just ran away from. Except she doesn’t have glowing green eyes, fangs, or scaly skin.
Dr. Younts raises her eyebrow. “You kids all right?”